SATs Year Six

Year 6 SATs Information for parents and children

Your child will shortly be taking their SATs. We are really proud of how hard they have worked and are sure they will do well. We have tried hard to prepare your child for the tests and they will be familiar with the style, content and marking schemes of the tests. To help them achieve maximum ‘brain power ‘ we will offer a breakfast club from 8.45 to 9.00am - this will be a time for them to make sure they are well prepared and positive. We will do our best to encourage and support your child.

It would help us if you could make sure your child gets a good night’s sleep and eats some breakfast before coming to school. A labelled bottle of water would be helpful so they can keep hydrated.

If there are any problems please let us know, we want all the children to feel they can do their best. We do not suggest ‘cramming’ but two websites we can recommend for revision are: ‘The School Run’ and BBC Bitesize.

The children are assessed in two ways - Teacher Assessment and SATs tests. Please note there is no test for writing and science - your child’s attainment is based upon teacher assessment only.

Teacher Assessment

Teacher assessment draws together everything the teacher knows about a child, including normal class lessons, observations, marked work and school assessments.

Teacher assessment is not a ‘snapshot’, like tests, and is therefore more reliable.

Due to the above, there can be a difference between teacher assessment results and test levels.

We will assess their writing composition, so your child’s result for English writing will be a judgement of their work across year 6. Your child's grammar, punctuation and spelling skills will be assessed as part of their writing, but their creativity and writing style will also be evaluated.

The assessment of writing is through teacher assessment, your child’s writing throughout the year will be assessed against national standard targets.

Science is also reported through teacher assessment.

SATs tests

This year group will be the second cohort to take the new SATs papers. These tests in English and maths will reflect the new National Curriculum (2014) and are intended to be more rigorous. There will also be a completely new marking scheme to replace the previous National Curriculum levels. There are no longer Level 6 tests.

In the week of May 8 children will sit tests in:

Reading

Maths

Spelling, punctuation and grammar

The previous National Curriculum levels have been scrapped and instead you will be given your child’s raw score (the actual number of marks they get), alongside their scaled score and whether they have reached the expected standard set by the Department for Education (‘NS’ means that the expected standard was not achieved and ‘AS’ means the expected standard was achieved). The range of scaled scores available for each KS2 test is:

80 (the lowest scaled score that can be awarded)

120 (the highest scaled score)

The expected standard for each test is a scaled score of 100 or more. If a child is awarded a scaled score of 99 or less they won't have achieved the expected standard in the test.

These tests will be both set and marked externally, and the results will be used to measure the school’s performance (for example, through reporting to Ofsted and published league tables). Your child’s marks will be used in conjunction with teacher assessment to give a broader picture of their attainment.